Dave’s OPML Experiment is starting to interest me. Raw subscription lists represent the totality of someone’s range of interests. I need something more refined, more focused. Something more like a Reading List. In fact, I’d like to see topical, aggregated reading lists from many sources.

The Top 100 feeds are not that interesting to me. It covers too broad a range of topics and a well known set of sources. But suppose we tie reading lists back into the Tree of Knowledge so that I can view the top 100 feeds relevant to any given node on the tree. Now that would be interesting.

The Sugar Bowl did not outdraw the best NFL playoff game, but I was surprised to see just how well it did. Its Nielsen rating was 14.8 with a 23.0 share, just behind the Dallas/Carolina game with a 15.4 rating and 25.0 share. The Sugar Bowl is down from last year’s Fiesta Bowl 17.2, and NFL was down from last year’s 16.0 for Atlanta/Green Bay. I have no idea how much of the drop can be attributed to competition from the NFL and how much to diluted interest because of the split national championship with USC.

If anyone knows how much the networks paid for the opening NFL playoff round, then we’ll have an idea just how much money a Division 1 playoff could pay out.

Well, I think that I’ve drawn another line in the sand. I was looking at the new books at the local library when they brought out My ****** Without Bars. The librarian asked if I was a sports fan, I glanced at the cover, I replied “Yes, but I’m not interested” and we exchanged a few comments about the author. Ten years ago I could have gotten worked up about the man, his fall and the Hall of Fame. But now, I’ve moved on. I just wish that the sports media would hurry up and move on as well.

Dave is conducting a public experiment with OPML subscriptions lists. Personally, I’m a bit sceptical about the value of raw subscription lists – I’d much rather subscribe to the Human Aggregator than face the hundred’s of feeds that Scoble consumes. RSS may increase the scope of our vision by an order of magnitude over the source web sites, but that’s still just a drop in the blog bucket.

I’m much more interested in moderated views of the blogoverse. For example, the Carnival of the Capitalists is great – I just wish that it had a single, consolidated feed. And Fanblogs is my favorite sports blog. I’d love to see more group blogs that bring together related interests with separate areas of responsibility.

But maybe Dave can prove me wrong. If so, then more power to him.

After doing some homework [CSS in RSS (yet again), Syndication and CSS], it seems inevitable that CSS will be present in RSS. As a user of a single page aggregator (Radio Userland), I suspect that I’m going to be in the experimental front line. Please use CSS to make your ideas shine, not display your graphical wizardry. When I visit your website, I’m visiting your office. But when I subscribe to your feed, you’re invited into my house. Try to play nice.

Scoble is wrestling with RSS vs HTML. Seems to me that this is yet another round of Content vs Presentation. Compare a web page aggregator polling web sites and caching web pages to a RSS news aggregator – the major difference lies in the distinction between content and presentation. Believers in the primacy of content will prefer RSS, while believers in presentation will prefer HTML.

Personally, I believe in the primacy of content. But I also understand the limitations of semantic markup in content. Presentation can be more finely nuanced – is it strong or very strong, is my strong stronger than yours? Presentation can make clear what content poorly expresses. Of course, I’m rarely interested in nuance and it’s rarely properly expressed.

Where I take exception to presentation is when it tries to barge it’s way in where it doesn’t belong. I believe that RSS is for content. Don’t project your presentation into my news aggregator. If it’s important to you, then put a summary in the RSS and have me to jump back to the source page. Or add the mixed content and presentation as a RSS enclosure. But please don’t try to coerce presentation into my RSS content.

That was painful. I was ok at 7-3. I was worried at 14-3. I was hoping to get to halftime without any more damage at 21-3. I was channel surfing at 28-3. And I couldn’t take any more at 38-3. Oh well, wait till next year.

One of the problems with being a public company is the pressure to Grow or Die. The shareholders want growth to justify a higher multiple for the share price. The executive staff wants growth to satisfy their ambitions. And the employees want growth to fuel promotions and raises. Unfortunately, organic growth is hard. It’s tempting to grow by acquisition. And it’s way too easy to make a stupid acquisition.

Of course, hindsight is 20-20. In real life, the executive staff is blinded by confidence in their ability to lead the acquistion to success. And the reward for success out weighs the penalty for failure. I suspect that if the current focus on executive accountability continues, then we’ll see fewer stupid acquisitions. But if the accountability spotlight goes out, then all bets are off.

Congratulations to the Trojans. The football team took care of business in the Rose Bowl, with a dominating win over Michigan. That should give them the No. 1 ranking in the AP poll and insure a split championship along with the winner of Oklahome-LSU.

I’ll be very interested in the rating numbers for Sunday’s Sugar Bowl. The BCS bowls will pay the participating conferences $80 million this year. If you want a Division 1 playoff, then you need to see some impressive numbers – because TV money is going to have to replace most of that $80 million. I think that the weekend’s NFL playoff slate will slake the appetite of all but the most avid sports fan and will be surprised if the Sugar Bowl out does the best NFL playoff game.

It’s taken five movies, but I think that I’ve actually come around to Peter Jackson’s vision of the Lord of the Rings. There is a tendency for the Ring-head to judge the movies by what was left out rather than what actually made it in. But when I viewed the Return of the King, I was able to enjoy it for what was there – undistracted by what I expected to see.

I have to thank Jackson for bringing Frodo and Sam’s quest to life for me. I tend to skip over their dark quest – a tale full of fear and doubt, and struggles against their own inner demons. The others are on a bright mission of vain glory – a noble fight against great odds in which any doubts before battle are dispelled once the battle is joined. But Jackson forced me to give Frodo and Sam their due and I’ll actually follow their quest on my next reading.

But there’s no risk of the DVD trilogy replacing the aged paperbacks on my bookshelf. Jackson’s vision pales in comparision to what unfolds before my mind’s eye when I immerse myself in the story. I see a wider and richer set of characters and the story fits into a richer background.